Taking up the historical evolution of Darwin and his theories and the cultural responses they have inspired, Reflecting on Darwin poses the following questions: 'How are the apparatuses in the mid-nineteenth century and at the turn of the twenty-first century interconnected with bio-scientific paradigms in art, literature, culture and science?' 'How are naturalism, determinism and Darwinism - the eugenics of the nineteenth century and the genetic coding of the twentieth century - positioned, embodied and staged in various media configurations and media genres?' and 'How have particular media apparatuses formed, displaced or stabilized the various concepts of humankind in the framework of evolutionary theory?' Ranging from the early circulation of Darwin's ideas to the present, this interdisciplinary collection pays particular attention to Darwin's postmillennial reception. Beginning with an overview of the historical development of contemporary ecological and ethical fears, Reflecting on Darwin then turns to Darwin's influence on contemporary media, neo-Victorian literature and culture, science fiction literature and film, and contemporary theory. In examining the plurality of ways in which Darwin has been rewritten and reappropriated, this unique volume both mirrors and inspects the complexity of recent debates in Victorian and neo-Victorian studies.

This volume explores the dynamic and productive cultural forces engendered by exiles, wanderers, and diasporic communities in Britain and Italy over more than five centuries. It investigates the historic resonance of transnational encounters and movements between two European cultures that look back on a long history of cross-fertilisation. Drawn from a range of academic disciplines including literary studies, history, musicology, art history and bibliography, it presents the ways in which exiles, emigres, intermediaries and their attendant cultural perspectives interact with the sometimes repressive, sometimes productive religious or political systems and ideologies that they encounter. This volume pays tribute to the stimulating exchange, circulation, and appropriation that has occurred between Britain and Italy, showing that the condition of displacement can lead not only to the articulation of loss and grief, but also to fruitful forms of interaction.

Half a millennium of English and American fantasies of Venice: this collection of essays by leading critics in the field explores the continued and continuing fascination of travellers, writers, artists, theatre workers and film makers with the amphibious and ambiguous city in the lagoon. There is hardly another place in Europe that has become so much of a palimpsest, inscribed with the fantasies, the dreams and nightmares of generations of foreigners, and this turns Venetian Views, Venetian Blinds into a particularly pertinent case study of the ways cultural difference within Europe is experienced, enacted and constructed. The essays range across five centuries - from the Renaissance to our postmodern present, from Shakespeare and his contemporary Coryate to recent novels, detective fiction and films - and, in contrast to previous studies focussing on the Grand Tour, they emphasise more recent developments and how they continue or disrupt traditional ways of perceiving - or being blind to! - Venice.